“Yes!” Rock punched his fist into the air.
Cade braced his wrists on the edge of the table, his fingers still hovering over the keyboard. That was close, way too fucking close. Adrenaline high would soon give way to adrenaline dump, but damn he loved the fucking rush of beating the other operator. Hacking shit like this fucking rocked. But he could have done without the call being quite that close. “Fuck, too fucking close.”
“Agreed,” Rock shifted his ankle on the chair as he dialed the satellite phone. “Ghost Two, Ghost One, get your pretty ass to the extraction point and quit dicking around.”
“I love you too, baby.”Grif’s words could barely be heard over the cheers of Angelo and Danny.
“Fucker.” Rock pressed end on the call, “He’s a fucker.”
“But you love him anyway.” Cade started shutting down equipment. Their asses needed to get to Kabul just over seventy miles away. There they would meet up with the team, head forty miles north to Bagram Air Base, and drop the captive. Then, and only then, could they go home.
“Yeah.” Rock admitted, “But he’s still a dick. I’m too old for this shit.”
“No,” Cade refused to believe that was it. “You are being a grumpy ass because this is one of the few times that you have been in mobile TOC rather than out there in the middle of shit.”
“Truth.” Rock muttered, “Fucking ankle.”
“Next time, look where you are jumping.”
“It was an eight-foot drop in the dark, the stone appeared outta nowhere and attacked me.”
“Sure, sure.” Cade rolled up the power cords and stuffed them into their spot in the case he used for his laptops. “And your night vision glasses failed. I know, I know.” This right here, the banter, the sniping back and forth with his boss. The high octane rush of a mission coming down to the wire finally removed any of the awkwardness which had filled the space between him and his team since the cluster fuck that was his weekend of R&R in Brazil eight weeks ago.
He snapped the locks on the case and scanned the small room they had worked in. The only one which had been small enough that their portable jammer would block any bugs they had missed. Its range wasn’t more than six feet in any direction, and even though the CIA were on the same side as his team were, Ghosts missions were highly classified. The last thing they wanted was a media leak that this particular warlord had been captured. Nope, that would be one the White House would want to announce, probably the President himself.
“Ready?”
“Yeah,” Rock grabbed the arm Cade held out to him, gripping him around the forearm he pulled himself to his feet. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“You just want to get home so Allie can baby you.”
“Ah fuck…” Rock’s expression fell, “She is going to murder me.”
“She’ll chase you with a damn skillet,” Cade checked the street outside, then pulled open the door, “But you can’t run.”
“Fabulous.” Rock hobbled to the truck and climbed in, “just fucking fabulous. I had forgotten about that bit.”
Cade pressed call on the satellite phone, “TOC, Ghost Three and One are headed to checkpoint Zulu.”
“Roger that, Ghost Three,” Harper responded, “TOC has eyes on you. Talk to you on the other side.”
Cade didn’t bother to respond. He didn’t need to. Knowing that Harper would keep an eye on their back trail was helpful. Despite the short distance, this was still Afghanistan, and over here trouble could come outta nowhere. He turned over the engine of the truck and headed into traffic.
“On the road again—” Rock sang softly.
“Boss, somewhere there’s a crow opera missing a soprano.”
“Drive, asshole, the lights are green.”
“Roger that.”
Chapter Seven
Sitting in the light of the War - Room of Dreamland, deep inside a dormant volcano in Mexico, Cade tilted his head from one side to the other, looking at the bag from every angle. What the actual fuck was he doing? He should have dumped this shit when they came back from Brazil. But nope. He hadn’t and now because dreams kept him from sleeping, it kept his dick rock hard and aching. Damn, stupid dick wanted more, and Cade was the freaking idiot listening to it. He was here, in the War - Room, with the bag of Rio’s gear.
“You want coffee, bro?” Angelo stretched his hands over his head, linking his fingers together, leaning back with his shoulders to ease the kinks that came from hunching over a keyboard for hours on end.
“Yeah, stick a spoon of sugar in it though, will ya?” Cade knew by asking for the sugar he was telling ‘Lo that he was having a shitty night. But eh, there weren’t many secrets here in this place.
